Plato
is less (if at all) hellenic!, so that, in order for us to return to genuine
christianity, to the hellenic christianity, we need someone else, but not
Plato! The papal word-play does not even bother to explain or just define
why the most important thinker of Greece, without whom even Aristotle is
unintelligible, is not representative of the hellenic mind, and how this
non-hellenic thinker managed to make the West mathematical, and not the
byzantine East (admittedly more Platonic than the West), so that
the pope is able now to present (what he understands from)
Byzantium as an
exemplar to the West? Why does Benedict fail to recognise in Plato's
mathematical adoption-distortion by the West, a continuity with his own
scholasticism and "reasonable" faith?
This gives rise to two
principles which are crucial for the issue we have raised. First, only the
kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and
empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim
to be science must be measured against this criterion [in
spite of optional criteria, equally possible].
Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology and
philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity.
A second point, which is important for our reflections, is that by its
very nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an
unscientific or pre-scientific question. Consequently, we are faced with a
reduction of the radius of science and reason, one which needs to be
questioned.
Benedict says,
you don't
worship reason enough! Reason-worshippers in the university perhaps
start to fear, that behind the (consistent) question of the pope, there is
hidden and ready to return, his totalitarian worship of a particular
reason – and we on our part wonder, what all this discussion has to do with
Faith?
